


The Lesser End of the Bargain

by BoPeepWithNoSheep



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Blood Magic, Mentions of Rape, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Prostitution, Slavery, minor gore, selling teeth and hair for money, street surgery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 23:06:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11816070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoPeepWithNoSheep/pseuds/BoPeepWithNoSheep
Summary: A series of short prompts, some canon compliant and some au, centered around Varania, Fenris, and occasionally their mother.





	1. Varania I - Fallen

Varania is many things, and very few of them good. She is an elf, born into a race that will never rise above it’s station no matter how hard they may try. She is a mage, cursed with magic that condemned her to stay in Tevinter, for where else can she have it an be free? She is liberati, a slave without the few protections the actual title would allow. All of those things are facts that she must live with, survive in spite of. None of them are good, none of them help her.

She often finds herself staring at her hands, they are rough and callused. So scarred that she is unsure which creases on her palms she was born with and which come from the many ‘donations’ she made in order to pay for Mother’s medicine. She has been told they are the hands of a good slave and a good citizen. They are coated in blood, but it still surprises her when she realizes that most of it is her own. She has bent over backwards, she has groveled, she has lied and cheated, she has betrayed and she has bled for men who see her at best as a pawn and at worst as no greater than cattle. She has done great, terrible things with little hesitation because she does what she is told because what else can she do?

No matter what she does, she will always be a slave. She know it in the way her posture changes when an unknown human walks into a room. She knows it in the way she flinches when a hand moves too quickly or a voice raised suddenly. She knows it in the very curve of her spine, that no matter how tall she stands will always ache because of years spent bent over cloth for hours praying that her seams would be pleasing to the eye and she wouldn’t get the switch.

There will never be escape from it, she knows this now, her delusions gifted to her by Leto in the guise of dreams for a better future finally ripped from her heart. It is a cold, dead thing now, beating without regard to whether she wants it to continue. She stays in Kirkwall because there is nowhere else to go. She does what she must to live, she cowers and bends and pleases because she is broken and it is all she knows how to do. To her dull surprise she finds the black market for a willing blood thrall exists in Kirkwall just as it did in Tevine and she thinks that might break another part of her but she is unsure. What does breaking shattered pieces further matter?

She earns a reputation as many things, whore likely being the kindest and prays word never makes it back to Leto of what she has become. She has little pride left but the idea of him knowing she has sank so low when he has risen to such heights is terrifying for reasons she cannot put into words. Her thoughts often wander to him, to how he has managed so much where she has fallen so far. On the long nights where she spends hours healing cuts, bruises, and broken bones she wonders most of all how Leto–How Fenris ever learned to say no.

She thinks she might hate him for being able to.


	2. Metrodora I - A Mother’s Concerns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is about Fenris and Varania's mother, who I have named Metrodora. There is little basis in canon for her so I have filled in a lot and she is effectively an oc.

Metrodora is a model house slave, she is quiet and obedient. She is talented but cowed, she knows her value but does not push the boundaries of them. She is rewarded, like a Good Slave with a benevolent master. Her children are not taken from her and sold, her son is given simple work in the orchards, her daughter is learning her skills. One day, she too will be a Good Slave, it simultaneously brings relief while also making her stomach churn. Their futures, safe so long as she stays in favor, are as set in stone as these things can be. Masters can be fickle, whims changing at the drop of a hat but Metrodora knows what to do to curry the favor she needs to survive, to allow her children to survive. She is, after all, a Good Slave. Still, Metrodora has her concerns for both of her children.

First there is Leto, the most obvious problem. Her Little Sunrise is brazen, he is loud, most of all he is stubborn as a qunari beast of burden. He fights with other slaves at even the slightest insult and manages to stir up trouble no matter where he strays. Metrodora prays to the old gods, the Maker, all of the powers that be that he will never step over the line between childish mischief and rebellion. He is so brave, she thinks perhaps he could do it one day, he could rally up a slave holding, raze a household, perhaps even kill a magister but such thoughts are not what a Good Slave should be thinking. She thinks them regardless, because she knows the stories of what happens to those brave slaves. Flayed alive, bones crushed, heads put on pikes for all to see. Brave slaves constantly walked hand in hand with death. Sometimes she wished she had a coward for a son, Metrodora wonders if this makes her a bad mother.

Then, there is Varania, she is a little thing of beauty, even so young. That, perhaps, worries Metrodora more than the frost that coats her hands when she is angry. Sometimes at night she stares at her daughter’s pretty little face while she is sleeping and she sees the horrors that beautiful elves face. Her daughter will be stunning if she stays within the household, away from hard labor and harsh punishments. One day, after happening upon a used girl while delivering a mended coat back to her Master’s quarters she sees her daughter in that battered form. The image of her daughter thrashing beneath a heavy form, is seared into her mind. Her hands shake when she attempts to sew and no food she eats will stay down. That night she nearly takes a knife to the face of her Little Sunset–Better to inflict pain now if it will save her from it later, but Leto stirs and she loses her nerve. Metrodora wonders if this makes her a bad mother.

When she watches her children play in the courtyard as she works Metrodora prays that they will outlive her. She prays that no harm will come to them that she can prevent, no matter how she must prevent it. Some days Metrodora sees nothing but blood and terror for her children, she sees their bodies broken and thrown away like garbage. Some days Metrodora dreams of what will become of her two beautiful children but most days are spent on making sure they live to see their own futures unfold.


	3. Varania II - Cost of Living

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone once asked me my inspiration for writing Varania the way that I do, I told them she's the combination of Fantine from Les Mis and The Witch from Into the Woods and if that doesn’t warn you about what kind of fic this is going to be I don’t know what to tell you.

Varania steels herself, she is doing this for Mother. She is doing this so Mother will live, will walk again, so that when she is well they can finally escape this hell of an empire. She agreed to this, she reminds herself repeatedly when the foul man bids her to swallow something that burns her throat going down. When he eases her onto a cot, a women behind him making pleased chittering something about fresh finds and willing patients. She squeezes her eyes closed and wills her ears to hear nothing, it is not an unfamiliar endeavor and it makes her feel as though she is a slave again. Makes her wonder if she has ever stopped being one.

The metal is cool in her mouth and her mind buzzes as she must push all of her magic down. Tightly into that little box in the pit of her stomach, preparing herself for the pain. The man is counting—Three, Two—Her vision blanks, she can see nothing and feel nothing but searing agony as her molar is ripped from her gums. Blood fills her mouth and she is choking on it, this is where she will die. She will die here and mother will die in their hovel wasting away while Varania drowns in her own blood.

But she doesn’t, pain doesn’t fade but she is tilted to her side. Blood oozes in a slow stream from her mouth before she begins to cough and heave. The pain makes her vision go black even as she opens her eyes. Magic swells within her, she can’t stamp it down completely and she can feel the frost snaking over her hands and up her arms as she lets loose a wail of pain. The couple leave her like that for what feels like hours, at one point of them thinks to place one of her iced over hands on her swollen cheek and though the cold soothes for a moment the pressure soon has her crying again.

For Mother, for Mother, she mentally chants though the way the woman eyes her wearily she thinks she must be saying it out loud as well. Finally when the bleeding has slowed she feels a bottle pressed to her lips and again the burning liquid fills her mouth and slithers down her throat like hellfire. She is hefted back onto her back and again the smooth metal of the pliers passes her lips and grips onto another tooth.

“Just three more, sweetling.”

In the end it doesn’t matter, the coin isn’t enough.

Nothing she does is enough to keep Mother alive.


	4. Varania III - Magister's Little Bird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris is not the last of Danarius' lyrium experiments. When he comes to meet his sister, he finds she is not what he had anticipated in more ways than he could imagine.

Master is dead. Master is laying on the ground dead because she was not fast enough. She could not get past the red-smeared mage. Nevermind, the archer–talented enough to pin her boots to the floor, only just barely nicking her feet in the process. Her caught feet do not matter. Her magic should have been able to get past them, no shield can stop her strange, solid magic but the opposing mage hadn’t used a shield, they had just been quicker. She had never failed before, she has shoved breath out of lungs and crushed throats with solidified mana for less than what these people have done. Master is dead and she is not. Circe does not understand.

Her mind does not race, it is not capable of such a reaction that is not a response to danger towards Master. Her brands overflow too much into her thoughts, keep her calm and quiet and tired until the time comes for them to whir to life with a fierce buzz. The buzz is the only time that she can feel clearly, without the fog in her ears and the gauze over her eyes, the buzz makes her feel alive. She protects Master because then she finally feels alive. Master lays dead upon the floor there is no buzz, no urge to defend him, there is only a hollow place in her head. Circe does not understand.

The man who has killed Master calls her something, a name or an insult she is not sure, but she does not respond any more than to flick her eyes over to him. He stands above Master’s body, heart in his fist like a trophy. She feels no fear but there is something, an echo of something, a thought in her mind that stands out when she looks at this man. Master had called him her predecessor but he is also something else. Circe does not understand.

_"Leto."_ The word leave her lips before Circe can process them. It is an important word, an important name, but she cannot recall why. They are not one of Master’s contemporaries, the names of which she knows but does not remember memorizing. Not any of the apprentices come and gone. Something more important. Nonetheless the man’s head swivels to stare at her when she speaks. He opens his mouth to say something but all that comes out is an angry sound as he throws Master’s heart to the floor. Her own heart skips a beat as the organ hits the ground with a squelch, there is something satisfying about that sound. Circe does not understand.

There are tears unshed in the elven man’s eyes as he stares at her. Then there is rage, he gestures wildly at Master then towards her. His words are loud and grating and they almost break through to her. Instead she catches only a few, holding them tightly with her mind so they can’t evaporate back into the fog. _‘Tainted by magic’_  and _'Better off dead’_ but they are still so far away she cannot manage to concern herself with the anger behind them. Instead she bends down to dislodge her boots from the floor, which she can’t actually manage, so she steps out of them. Her bare feet touch the ground, bare like the man ranting before her and somehow her skin touching the same floor as him just seems right. Circe does not understand.

Too busy staring down almost curiously at her feet Circe does not notice as hands are set around her shoulders. Her head jerks up and glazed eyes meet bright ones. It is the red-smeared mage, they steer her and she walks without complaint. Soon she finds herself directly before the bellowing elven man. His nose is familiar, she notes dully as she stares at him but he has piqued her stunted interest now so she stares in return. His eyes are so wide and alive, like perhaps if she stares at them long enough maybe she could feel the buzz again. Only Master can let her have that buzz though, but this man is not her Master, unless he is now. He speaks but Circe does not understand.

Then the red-smeared mage speaks and it hits Circe like slap. “She is your _sister_ and she is _alive_.” They are the first words to break through her fog and it startles her. Her eyes widen and her head snaps sideways so she can look at the one who spoke them. There is sadness in the mage’s eyes, sadness and regret. Piercing eyes soften as they glance at her before turning again to bore into the elf who seems to be relenting. Perhaps, the red-smeared mage is his Master. Now her Master? The hands on her shoulders tighten their grip minutely, tighten protectively. Circe does not understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Varania is subjected to Danarius' lyrium experiments, but her mage blood leads to complications.
> 
> The first in this au verse Varania is renamed Circe by Danarius and lyrium brands wreak hell on a mage’s mind and she’s more or less half aware of anything besides protecting Danarius at any given time. She’s much more docile than Fenris and tends not to listen to anyone but Danarius. She acts a bit like a sleepwalker when not acting as a bodyguard unless especially pressed for responses.


End file.
